


Poetry In Motion

by BasicBathsheba



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: 1960s AU, Basically this is an Oxford AU, Cults, Dark Academia AU, M/M, Secret Societies, Simon POV, Uni AU, Unresolved Sexual Tension, a lot of sitting on roofs, a lot of smoking and pining, a lot of tea, coffee bars & pubs, era-specific homophobia, mod! baz, radical feminist! penny, radio Luxembourg, welsh poetry, welsh! simon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-11-02 06:31:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20653742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BasicBathsheba/pseuds/BasicBathsheba
Summary: No one at Watford is Welsh. No one feels lucky. No one feels grateful. No one wears shirts with small holes in the collars. No one marvels at scones and tea with cream and sugar and the never ending supply of cigarettes that flow through the campus like manna from Heaven. No one feels the need, every moment of every day, to prove their place. To prove that they deserve to be here. That they were right for being chosen.Everyone — even the best of them, even Penny — is like Baz Pitch.***1961. Watford University has just become co-educational, the world is changing, and autumn is coming to a close. Simon Snow is far from home in Wales, out of place at Watford, and obsessed with a mystery. And the boy in the flat next door.





	Poetry In Motion

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the **Carry On Mini Bang!** Huge thanks to my partner strange-little-hufflepuff for pushing me to write a** Dark Academia AU**. This is my first time in this #aesthetic and I hope it worked! Big shout out to my incredible betas, @carryonsimoncarryonbaz and @messofthejess. Title is from Poetry In Motion by Johnny Tillotson, 1961.
> 
> If you're curious about what Dark Academia is, here's [a great link](https://blackhholesbooks.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/litcrit-dark-academia/) I used to do my research! Also, I apologise for my attempt at poetry analysis.
> 
> xx - Ban

I’d never had a real scone before Watford.

I’d had things that were called scones — lumpy, overbaked pieces of sawdust that you would dunk in tea so black it could stain rings around the cup. We had them occasionally at the grammar school, as a kind of end of term treat. Mr. Mage would have them brought out with a smile, and we’d all wait until he dismissed our attention to climb over each other to get at them.

They were a luxury to me back then. At the boy’s home, Matron would never have sprung for something like that. Waste of butter. A frivolous, impractical thing to spend precious rations on. We didn’t have tea either, not really, and when we did it was like water, the leaves used and reused.

We didn’t question it — everyone made do. Everyone went without. We’d been born into a war. We’d never known a Britain that had rich tea and scones piled with jam and cranberries, scones that fell apart in your mouth and were more filling than an entire meal of boiled cabbage and cut parts.

It wasn’t until I started at Watford University — until I had my first scone, my first _ real _ scone, while sitting at High Tea that first term with the other men from my college — that I realised my experiences weren’t universal. Scones weren’t a new discovery. They weren’t a luxury. Sitting at that table, it became sickeningly clear to me that my fellow students had never felt austerity, had never gone to bed hungry, had never been just a touch too cold from worn through, mended socks and jumpers and hand me down coats.

Sitting at that High Tea, I realised that I hadn’t just grown up in Wales. I’d grown up in a different time. I wasn’t even the same species as the men around me.

At the grammar school, at least everyone else was Welsh. I may have been the poorest of the lot — the orphan, the charity case, the one chosen and given a shot — but everyone else at Davy Mage’s school still slept in cold rooms so we could conserve coal. We all knew first hand where the coal came from: we’d grown up in mining villages. Every boy there knew that his spot in the school had saved him from a spot in the pit. Everyone drank bitter tea and knew we were _ lucky _ to be there, the first class of a great reformer.

No one at Watford is Welsh. No one feels lucky. No one feels grateful. No one wears shirts with small holes in the collars. No one marvels at scones and tea with cream and sugar and the never ending supply of cigarettes that flow through the campus like manna from Heaven. No one feels the need, every moment of every day, to prove their place. To prove that they deserve to be here. That they were right for being chosen.

Everyone — even the best of them, even Penny — is like Baz Pitch. 

He’s laid out on the ground in front of the White Chapel with the rest of the students from Mummers College, sprawled on a tartan wool blanket that’s thicker than anything I’d ever seen as a child, blowing smoke out into the crisp blue September air. He has a fag in one hand and he lazily flicks it every few minutes, dropping his ashes onto the wool fibres. He’s passing a flask back and forth between his friend Niall and his cousin Dev, and they’re laughing at something Dev is reading out of a book.

They have scones with them and a thermos of tea, like a mockery of tea time. They’ve torn into the scones, eaten out the sweet cranberries and pulled apart the flaky dough, and the crumbs are littered around them. In the grass. Left for the birds.

Wasted.

Baz’s eyes meet mine as he brings the flask to his lips, a challenge hiding in the corner. His eyes are the grey of a darkening sky rolling in over the hills back home, just barely holding back a storm. They’re always flashing like lightning when he looks at me like this. Like he’s inviting me to look at the mess of luxury and privilege laid out around him. Like he’s showing it off. Just to prove he can. Just to prove I can’t.

🝪

I’m late for work.

I’m always late for work, even though I really shouldn’t be, considering that I live above the pub. But I’m always trailing behind; it takes me forever to bike from campus to the village of Watford where I live and work, so it’s always a dash to get out of lecture and home to change before my shift starts downstairs.

Almost no one else at Watford lives in the village like I do. Well, no one except Baz, who lives in the upstairs flat of the building next door. I still don’t understand why; I live in my tiny, one room flat because I can’t afford the lodging on campus or any of the houses closer to the university.

But Baz has all the money in the world. He has perfectly tailored suits and brogues that cost more than my best jacket. There’s no reason for him to live above a coffee bar in a flat that can’t be any larger than my own. I can see straight into it, because of the way the windows are set up, so I know that it’s virtually identical to mine. I know it’s just as tight.

It’s cleaner than mine, though. And lusher, too. I can see it clearly if I move around near my window, because it’s so close; can see that the walls have neat floral wallpaper and he has thick, expensive looking furniture and soft furnishings and bookcases stuffed with books and records. So many records.

I have a bare bones desk; bed; kettle and table. The most expensive thing in my flat is the secondhand Royal typewriter Mr. Mage gifted me before I left for Watford. It had been in his family, he’d told me. I’d ridden the train to Watford with it sitting on my lap.

I’ve never asked Baz why he lives there. I’ve wanted to, some nights, when I see that he’s crawled out his window and propped the sash open so he can sit on the sloped roof above the cafe and smoke. I want to open my window and hang out of it, so close I could almost touch him, so close I can smell the smoke, and make him explain himself.

But I don’t. He’d just sneer at me, the way he always does when he sees me through the window, and act like I didn’t exist, and go back to whatever it is he does all day.

I’m late because of him. Because I stopped to change into my work shirt, and while I was doing up the buttons caught sight of Baz leant over his desk, his back arched, his hands flying across a page, viciously scrawling something before looking at it, tearing it apart, and starting again.

He has an expensive typewriter, gleaming and brand new, and he never uses it. He always writes things by hand.

I’m late to work because of that, because I got caught up trying to spy a glance at what he was writing, even though it’s too far away to see. I lost track of time as I stood there and watched the carnage of paper around him, the ink smeared over his hands, the black hair tucked back out of his way, not short enough to be professional, too long to be in style.

Not that it matters. He’ll never have to dress smartly to get a job to pay for all that bloody paper. He’ll never have a job in his life, unless he walks into some spot in a Chamber that’s been set aside for him since birth. Or maybe he’ll go to Parliament.

I could see that too well.

Glancing at the clock, I realise the time and my throat falls to my stomach as I remember I’m still late. I dash out the door, doing up my shirt and not bothering to lock as I pound down the dank, sticky staircase and into the smoky pub below.

It’s late enough that the students have cleared out from lunch, and still early enough that the after-work crowd hasn’t come in yet, so no one is here really except for two of the daytime regulars, and, of course, Penny and Agatha.

Agatha is perched on the edge of her chair, her legs crossed daintily, her dress riding up, showing off the pale skin between the bottom of her skirt and the tops of her tall socks. She never fully sits in the chairs or leans against the table, like Penny does. Penny is half collapsed against the sticky varnish top, one hand gesturing wildly while the other makes messy notes in a notebook.

They both have tea in front of them. They’re the only people who ever come here and order tea.

“Simon!” Penny says, looking up from the table. “Simon, come here!”

I grab a rag from behind the bar and make my way over to where they’re sitting. They’ve taken the large table in the corner near the fireplace like always, and Penny’s pamphlets are strewn across it.

_ Co-Educational Cloisters Now! _

_ Watford Women For Integration! _

_ The War Isn’t Over: Join The Watford Women’s Liberation Association _

“Liberation Association?” I ask, nodding down at one of the pamphlets. “You came up with a name?”

“For now,” Penny shrugs, taking a healthy sip of her tea. “It may change. But I figure, if the Dean isn’t going to allow us to meet on campus, we should at least have a name, so that he can censor us properly.” She puts her teacup down with a clank, and ignores the look Agatha is giving her. “I think we’re going to have a large turnout today.”

“I’ll get some water going, then,” I say, grabbing her empty cup and heading back to the bar.

There’s not going to be a large turnout. There never is, not really. Penny spent most of last year trying to put together meetings for her feminist organisation, and I don’t think she ever got more than ten women to show up.

To be fair to her, that aren’t that many women at Watford to begin with. Technically women have been here since the 20’s — that’s when Cloisters College was founded — but last year some of the other colleges opened up to be co-educational as well. White Chapel started admitting women, along with a handful of others. Mummers College didn’t, though.

That’s my college. The most distinguished one on campus. That’s still male only.

Penny says that it was an empty gesture to open up White Chapel and the others, that the school isn’t truly co-educational until all the colleges accept women, and that the campus is backwards and behind the times and chained to patriarchal tradition.

She’s on a mission to make Watford more egalitarian, one pamphlet at a time.

Between us, I don’t think she’s exactly wrong. Watford does favour the rich and privileged. But they did let me in. A nobody. And they let Penny in as well, even though it was probably because her father is a professor here, because she loves to tell everyone that she got kicked out of her entrance interview after she called the panel racist.

She’s one of the only non-white students on campus. She and Baz. But unlike Baz, who gets treated like he’s next in line to the throne because of how rich his family is, all the professors hate Penny. I’m fairly positive that it’s because she’s half Indian, but she insists it’s because she’s a woman.

_ “Or maybe both_,” she says sometimes _ . “You can be one, at Watford, but not both. And being a woman at Watford is like constantly being under attack.” _

That’s why she and her organisation meet off campus, here at the Goats Head pub. They aren’t allowed to meet as a student group, because they’ve been declared an unsanctioned, non-affiliated radical organisation.

Penny loves it.

She’d splashed that all over the flyers and pamphlets, and made a sash for herself to wear as she stood handing them out on campus. It was bright against her dark jacket and cigarette trousers, glowing in large white letters. _ Radical Feminist_.

She’d tried to get Agatha to wear one, but she refused. Said she didn’t want to bring the attention on her. Part of me thinks she comes to these feminist meetings with Penny as a way to experience a glimpse at a different life. One where she’s a revolutionary, where there’s danger, where she can play at being someone else.

Agatha isn’t like Penny and me. Her presence at Watford isn’t remarkable. Every person in her family has gone to Watford for as long as she can remember, and she’s the third woman to attend Cloisters College. She makes worse grades than I do, but it doesn’t really matter, because she’s told me that if she fails and can’t keep up, her mum will just get her married.

_ “They’ve set me up so I can never fail,” _ she said once, her lips stained red with wine and her eyes hooded. Smoke poured out from between her lips. _ “If I can’t make it on my own, no one will mind. They’ll have me a house and a fiance before I even graduate.” _

Once, I thought I might be that fiance. I’d loved the idea of it. Marrying into an English family with tradition and history, coming under her father’s wing. He’d talked about setting me up with an apprenticeship, sponsoring my application to medical school. Agatha would have been a path to a life I could never imagine. A good life, with Agatha by my side to help me navigate it. Help me learn the rules. Whisper in my ear what to do and how to play the game.

But Agatha doesn’t love me. And I don’t love her. Not the way she wants to be loved. She told me once she wants to be someone’s choice. Someone’s present. Not someone’s future.

I didn’t understand, but at the end of the day, I suppose that was the point. Agatha can think about the right now, can put the future off. I couldn’t understand where she was coming from, because I’ve never been able to afford to.

🝪

“Have you ever heard of the Catacombs Society?” Agatha whispers to me across the library table. 

I look up, blinking grit and Romantic poetry from my eyes. I chose to read for English when I started at Watford, because that’s what Mr. Mage read for, and I regret it constantly. Poetry is not my strong suit. It doesn’t help that I’m outpaced by many of my fellow classmates. Baz especially. I think he walked out of the womb spouting off Byron.

“The what?”

“The Catacombs Society,” she repeats, leaning in close. “It’s supposed to be an elite, secret society on campus.”

Next to me, Penny snorts. She always makes those kinds of noises. Unladylike, Agatha says. I think they’re brilliant. I think _ everything _about Penny is brilliant.

“What do they do, get together to drink blood and sacrifice virgins?”

“No,” Agatha says, sending Penny an annoyed glance and flicking her hair over her shoulder. The blonde strands fall like a perfect sheet, gleaming in the soft orange light of the evening library. “I’m not sure what they do. But rumour has it that if you can find them, they’ll make you a member.”

“So it’s just a puzzle?” I ask, tilting my head. “What’s the point of that?”

“The _ point _,” she says, leaning in, a smile on her face, “is that if you become a member, you get an automatic pass in all your tutorials for the rest of your time at Watford.”

“There’s no way,” I say immediately, even as Penny shakes her head.

“That’s hideous,” she agrees. “That’s completely unacceptable. And I bet they don’t even accept women.”

“How would that even work?” I add. “The professors would have to be in on it.”

“They are,” Agatha says in a conspiratorial tone. “I heard the Dean is always chosen from a former member, and staff members are given a set of names at the start of each term and asked to overlook any subpar grades.”

“If that were true, I would know,” Penny says, shaking her head. “My father would never do that. Secret societies are patriarchal and elitist, he’d never give students a free pass just for being a member.”

“Didn’t you say your dad is always getting pressured by the head of his department for stuff like that, though?” I ask, almost breathless. There’s a strange, tight feeling growing in my stomach. Guaranteed good marks for the rest of my time at Watford. That would change my life.

I’m constantly behind; struggling with my schoolwork, rushing to get to work. I live my life trying to find time to revise between my shifts at the pub, falling asleep before my head hits the pillow, dragging through each day like I’m carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. Terrified that I’ll fail out, or not make enough money to pay my fees. Terrified that I’ll have to return home to Wales and tell Mr. Mage I failed.

A guaranteed passing grade would mean I could live like everyone else. Could breathe like everyone else.

“Simon, you better not be actually considering this,” Penny scolds, breaking through my thoughts. “This society doesn’t even exist, and even if it does, it’s completely unacceptable. It’s unfair to every other student.”

“Right, of course,” I say, nodding and dragging my book back toward me. “Completely unfair.”

“If I ever found proof of something like this, I’d refuse to let the administration cover it up,” Penny says, her brown eyes growing sharp. “I’d cause a riot if I had to. I’d tear it all down.”

“Oh, calm down, Pen,” Agatha says, rolling her eyes. “I was just passing on some gossip, that’s all.” She looks up at me and gives me a shy smile, like we’re in on a secret together. I smile back. 

It never felt this way when we were together. Our short-lived romance was pressed between book pages and shoved between work shifts, drowned out by the typing of papers and the rush of the school year. We barely had time to learn each other’s secrets before it all came to an end.

“Where did you even hear this?” Penny asks, tucking her pen back behind her ear and propping her hand on her cheek to gaze levelly at Agatha. “Who told you?”

“Dev Grimm.”

“Dev Grimm?” I repeat. “How would he know?”

“He said he heard about it from his cousin. He told me about it this morning.”

“Baz.” My fingers curl around the spine of selected Byron poetry I’ve been holding. “Of course he’s involved. He’s probably a member.”

“He’s not a member, because it doesn’t exist,” Penny scolds. “And furthermore, Baz is definitely not getting a free pass. We have the same tutor, I always have to wait outside while they run over their sessions, and I can hear them talking. He does his work.”

“I’ve never seen him working on his coursework,’ I say, shaking my head. “He’s always just writing or reading or laying about and drinking. He’s never even touched his typewriter.”

“How suspicious that someone going for English is always just sitting around and reading,” Penny says, chuffing. “You really need to stop gazing through his windows. It’s becoming a bit odd.” 

“I don’t gaze through his windows!” I insist, feeling the heat rise to my cheeks. “I just don’t understand what he’s doing there. Why he lives in the village, I mean. Above a coffee bar of all things.”

“He probably finds it romantic and brooding,” Agatha says, standing up from the table. Her sheet of hair swings in front of her again as she bends to pick up her long jacket. When she has it buttoned up properly, it almost completely covers her checked pinafore, and all you can see are her clean white stockings. She looks like a fashion model in it. “Well, I’m done for tonight. Penny, you’re staying?”

“Mhhm,” Penny mumbles, already staring back down at her books. “See you.” She wiggles her fingers absentmindedly. There’s ink smudged across her thumb.

“I’m heading out too,” I say, standing quickly and shoving my own books into my rucksack. My eyes are growing tired, and I need to type up my paper. “Ags, can I walk you?”

“No need, I’m going to stop off at a friend’s before curfew, but thanks.” She gives me that smile again as we walk side by side out of the library and into the crisp chill of the evening. Agatha pulls her jacket tighter around her shoulders, and I shove my hands deep into my pockets.

“A free pass would be nice though, wouldn’t it?” she says quietly, staying by my side as I head toward where I’ve left my bike. She digs deep into her purse and pulls out her tin of cigarettes and a lighter. “If I had guaranteed grades, I could do anything when I left school. I could leave England, even. Take my degree and go somewhere warm.”

She offers me a cigarette but I shake my head. I don’t smoke. I’m the only one in Britain who doesn’t, I think. Agatha doesn’t take it personally, just lights up her tiny fag and takes a deep inhale.

“I dunno what I’d do,” I say, picking back up the conversation. “Maybe I’d go back to Wales. Go back to see Mr. Mage and ask for a job, try to give some other kids a chance, return his kindness.”

“Oh, Simon, you shouldn’t,” Agatha says, shaking her head. She sounds annoyed for some reason. “No matter what you do, you shouldn’t go back to Wales.”

“Maybe I’ll follow you somewhere warm, then?”

She smiles and takes several slow steps back down the cobbled path, stepping just outside the warmth of the street lamp. She’s mostly in shadow, but I can see the burning ember of her cigarette.

“No. You should go somewhere just for you. You should do something just for you, something you want.”

And then she’s gone, turning in a flash of blonde hair, her shoes making tidy clacks against the stones. I watch her for a moment before pulling myself up onto my bike and turning myself off campus, toward the village.

🝪

Baz is in his flat when I get home. 

The lights are on, so I can see him clearly, propped up uncomfortably in the chair next to his window, reading. His cigarette is on the window sill, the smoke blowing out into the night sky. A cup of tea sits next to his feet, and his sleeves are rolled up high on his forearms.

I put on my kettle for tea and open my window.

He has his music playing tonight and the notes float in on the nighttime wind, clear as if it were right next to me. I listen along as I get my tea things together, still keeping my flat mostly dark, waiting to see if the music breaks and the radio presenter comes on. 

Sometimes, when he’s listening to the radio, I’ll prop up my transistor on my counter and tune in to the same programme, twiddling the dials until I can pick up Radio Luxembourg, and I’ll do my reading and writing and washing up to the sound of Baz and my’s radios echoing back at each other.

No announcer interrupts the music tonight, however, so it must be a record.

I never know his records. I never know half the music I hear, honestly. I’ve never been able to keep up, but tonight’s album sounds older than usual, jazz instead of the rhythmic blues that Baz often favours, or the crooning love songs that the radio usually plays, and I nod my head in time with it as I make my tea and heat up some bread over the hob for toast and set myself up in front of my typewriter.

Penny says that I gaze into Baz’s window like a lovesick girl, but it’s not true. It’s just that he’s right there and unavoidable. And it makes no sense. Nothing about his lifestyle makes sense; not where he lives or how he lives or the fact that I never see him make anything other than tea or consume anything other than cigarettes while at home.

He’s a riddle. A mystery. One I can’t figure out. Who he is. Why he is.

And why he hates me.

I don’t think I’ll ever figure that one out. I have to assume it’s because of who I am. Welsh. Poor. A nobody, working to survive, while he was born with luxury and ease. I knew it was too much to think he’d have understood me, wouldn’t have looked down on me for looking and speaking and acting like an outsider, but from the first day I met him he’s been hideous. More hideous than everyone else.

He’s been everything I hate about Watford. The wealth and pretentiousness and elitism.

He’s hated me since that first High Tea, when I ate my first real scone and stared around at this strange new world I’d fallen into, my eyes wide, my heart racing. I’d been seated next to him at it, and I didn’t know anyone, and I’d turned to him, stuck out my hand, and tried to introduce myself.

I looked like a fool next to him, in my best brown jacket and trousers, my shoes scuffed but sturdy. Every inch of him was perfect. Tailored, adjusted, styled. Skinny tie, thin lapels, trousers that followed the curves of his legs. The height of fashion I didn’t even know existed.

“I’m Simon Snow,” I’d said. I could have cringed, to hear the way my voice sounded. The high lilt of my accent, sounding thin and sing-songing amongst a crowd of sharp-vowelled men. “Pleasure to meet you.”

He didn’t even shake my hand. Just stared at me.

“I’m sure it is,” he said. Then turned away.

I try to fight down the anger that surges in me when I think about it, try to take out my frustration on the keys, try to will the constant boiling feeling of being completely overwhelmed out through my fingers.

Pausing, I look up from the mess of notes and books and papers on my desk, and my gaze travels forward, out the window and into Baz’s flat.

He’s looking straight at me. One elbow perched on the window sash, his cigarette in his mouth, making his lips part into a kind of confused smirk. Just staring at me.

We keep eye contact for several seconds that feels like several years, and then as soon as it came on, it’s done. Baz leans forward, closes his window, and pulls his curtains across. He takes the music with him, but the smell of smoke remains.

A moment later I hear his door screeching open and then thudding closed as he leaves his flat.

🝪

“When do you think the society meets?” I ask Agatha a week later as she, Penny and I are crossing campus. There’s a cool breeze cutting through the grey day, bringing autumn with it. Agatha’s hair swirls around her, and Penny shivers. I drape my arm across her shoulders, and she eagerly burrows into my side.

“The Catacombs Society?” Agatha asks. “Probably a full moon.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” I say, nodding. Under my arm, Penny snorts.

“What, are they werewolves now?” she asks, shaking her head. “I cannot believe you two are still talking about this. I thought we agreed that it’s not real and highly unethical.”

“Of course the society isn’t real,” I say, even though I’m not so convinced. “But just imagine.”

“Why would you want to join this werewolf society anyway?” Penny continues. “You know it’s just full of rich, entitled men who think they’re better than everyone else and believe they are smarter—”

“Talking about me, Bunce?”

We turn as one, looking behind us to find the source of the voice. Baz Pitch is walking behind us, a mocking smile pulling up one corner of his mouth. His hair has been mussed by the wind; curled around his collar and tangled across his face, making him look uncharacteristically dishevelled. The rest of him is impeccable though, as always; neatly pressed wool trousers, deep green jumper, his jacket warm and thick and perfectly fitted. He’s holding a book in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Henry Vaughan’s selected poetry, the spine says. My stomach clenches. I’m meant to be reading that. I haven’t even gotten it from the library yet. I’m so behind.

“Well, I was talking about self-entitled men who think they’re better than everyone, so I suppose, yes,” Penny says, not even breaking stride. Baz lets out a bark of a laugh and moves up to walk next to her, inserting himself neatly between Penny and Agatha. They shift immediately to make room for him, and my stomach churns.

I’ve never understood why he’s perfectly pleasant to Penny and Ags, and such a prick to me. He and Agatha are nearly friends, and he and Penny have some unspoken truce, probably because they have the same tutor. They pick at each other in a way that sounds rude, but makes them laugh, and it’s their version of friendship.

If I said half the things Penny does to Baz, he’d likely kill me.

“We were talking about the secret Catacombs Society,” Agatha says, tucking her hair behind her ear and smiling at him. He gives her a calculating sideways glance that makes me ball my fists up inside my jacket pocket. “Have you ever heard of it?”

“What makes you think I would know about your werewolf society? Do I look like a werewolf to you, Wellbelove?”

“Your hair’s long enough,” I mutter, scowling down at the ground.

Baz’s head snaps over to me and he raises an eyebrow. They’re thick and full and look sculpted, sometimes. I don’t know how he does it. Men shouldn’t have facial hair that looks elegant, and yet somehow Baz has managed to.

“I think Snow is jealous,” he stage whispers to Agatha, who lets out a small huff. He pulls another long draw of his cigarette, and I watch as the smoke gets carried away on the breeze. “As it happens, I may know something about this society of yours. What would you like to know?”

“Is it true that members are guaranteed full marks for their whole time at Watford?” Agatha asks, sounding a touch too invested. Penny looks on disapprovingly, while Baz has a thoughtful expression on his face.

“I couldn’t possibly say,” he drawls. He’s putting on a show, drawing out his words. “Something like that would be very ill-advised to confirm, you see.”

Penny rolls her eyes.

“And I suppose this little boys’ club of yours doesn’t take women?” she interjects. Baz takes another drag of his cigarette and smiles.

“I never said I was a member. I just said I may know something about it.”

“How do you become a member?” Agatha pushes on. “I heard that if you can find one of their meetings, they have to induct you.”

“It seems like you already know all there is to know,” Baz says, staring ahead. He’s squinting at something in the distance, past the tall buildings that are blocking out the setting sun and throwing grey shadows onto the cobblestone walk. “Why the interest? Do you want to join?”

“No,” Agatha says, shaking her head. Her cheeks look flushed, and I can’t tell if it’s because of the wind or Baz. “I was just curious.”

“Good,” Penny says. “Because it would be completely unethical to join a group like that. Right, Simon?”

I scowl sideways at Penny and meet Baz’s piercing gaze. There’s humour lurking in his grey eyes, and I know he’s laughing at me.

“You trying to join, Snow?” he asks. “Are you that desperate for good marks? You should have told me, I’d _ happily _ help you study if I’d known you were so far behind.”

I ball my fists tighter and keep looking ahead so that I don’t grab Baz by the lapels of his dark jacket and shove him against one of the buildings and shake him until he loses that condescending, mocking tone and sneering smile and actually says what he means for once in his life.

Nothing he says is genuine. Every word is premeditated and calculated and designed to make me feel lesser.

“Leave him be,” Penny says, sounding very tired. She has no patience for Baz and I.

“I’m just being kind, Bunce,” Baz says, flashing her a feral smile. “Take it up with Snow.”

He takes a last drag of his cigarette and then drops it to the pavement, crushing it beneath his shoe, and then runs his free hand through his dark hair. It parts around his fingers like the black sea, dropping back into his face when he’s done.

“Come talk to me if you ever want to find that society, Wellbelove,” he says, dropping out of our group and taking a left toward the bell tower. He holds up the book of Vaughan poetry and taps it. “See you tomorrow, Bunce.”

He walks away without a look back or another word to me.

🝪

I can’t stop thinking about the Catacombs Society.

A free pass for the next two years. Guaranteed good marks.

I think about it while I’m in the library, juggling my books and trying to catch up on my studies, and then I feel bad for thinking about it when Penny puts her own reading aside to try to help me with mine. But it pushes to the forefront again when I race down the stairs, late to my shift at the Goat’s Head.

It thrums around my brain while I pull drinks and collect coins and wipe down sticky tables and watch the pub fill up with my fellow students, fresh off their lectures and eager to spend their Friday nights throwing away their disposable income. They don’t have reading and essays waiting for them that they’ve put off so they can work a double shift.

I think about it so much it consumes me.

And then at night, as I punch my lumpy mattress into shape and stare out my window to watch the flickering shadow of someone moving in the flat next door, I think about who else might be in the society.

The men from my college, most likely. The men with sharp fitting suits and easy smiles, men who have expensive shoes, who always have liquor and cigarettes, who have large groups of friends, who all grew up together.

Men like Baz.

He has to be a member. It doesn’t matter what Penny says about him still doing his reading, because that would be classic Baz. Join the society because he can, and then do his work anyway just to prove he could.

I’ll never be as rich as him, or as smart, or as composed and stylish. He’ll never view me as an equal.

But if I were in the Society… well, then he’d have to see me as one. He’d have to acknowledge I’m just as good as he is. Not that I would join it, mind you. Penny’s right. Joining the Society would be wrong.

In the flat across from me, Baz is leaving.

I hear his door screech closed, the dull thud of it hitting the frame, and I imagine the sounds of his footfalls on the stairs. I don’t know where he’s going. I never know where he goes when he does this; leaves his flat well after I’ve turned in for the night and disappears into the darkness. He comes back at some point after I’ve fallen asleep, because I never hear the door open, but he’s there in the mornings, making his tea and tightening his tie, gathering his books for class while I stumble along, late, attempting to get ready for another day of desperately trying my best.

Penny assumes he has some vivid life off campus; Agatha has suggested he’s just going to see Dev and Niall. He’s the type who wouldn’t care about the 10 pm curfew. He’d flaunt it openly. But neither of those ever seemed right to me.

What if he’s going somewhere else?

I roll over and pull my pillow between my arms, pressing my face deep into it.

What if he’s going to meet up with the Society?

🝪

“This is the best turnout we’ve ever had,” Penny says, her voice breathless with excitement, her eyes wide. “The pamphlets are working.”

“Brilliant,” I say, too busy pulling pints for the men at the bar to properly focus on Penny. It’s a madhouse in the Goats Head tonight, men and students everywhere, everyone clamouring for ale and attention. My boss, Ebb, works the room, clearing off tables and talking to patrons, an easy smile on her face. I don’t know how she does it. I feel like I’m burning alive.

“Can we get a round?” Penny asks, still leaning over the bar. “Everyone’s feeling festive.”

“Sure, of course, coming up,” I say, nodding. I glance at the table in the corner and count heads. Thirteen women, heads close together, leaning over a mess of papers and pamphlets. Trixie, Penny’s roommate, is holding court at one end, and it looks as though she’s brought all of her friends with her. It is a good turnout. Truly. It’s more members than the feminist organisation has ever seen.

“On the house,” I tell Penny, pulling out the necessary pint glasses and smiling at her. “Congrats on the turnout.”

“Oh, Simon,” Penny says, beaming back at me. “You’re lovely. But you’re not buying our drinks.”

“It’s a celebration!” I say, pulling the taps deftly and waiting for the foam to settle. “Your numbers are growing! You should be proud, Pen.”

“I am,” she says with a happy sigh, sliding up onto a recently vacated stool and resting her elbow on the bar. “I didn’t necessarily want Trixie involved — you know how she is — but she brought so many people. And some of these women have some extremely promising ideas, you should hear Keris’s thoughts on—”

“I would love to, but maybe some other time?” I ask, cutting her off. I slide the drinks in front of her, crowding them onto the bar, the ale spilling over. I hate to interrupt her, but I hate leaving her mid-conversation even more, and I’ve already spent as much time as I can with her. The men on the other end are getting rowdy.

“I’ll hold you to that!” she says with a grin, gathering up as many pints as she can in her arms. They spill over onto the sleeves of her blouse, the ale tipping dangerously toward the front of her pinafore, but she charges on, navigating her cargo across the crowded floor of the pub and to the table. The women seated around it let up a cheer as she appears.

Maybe her feminist organisation would have been more successful if she’d led with pints from the start, instead of always ordering tea.

By the time my shift comes to an end, we’re near closing and the bar has mostly emptied out, but Penny and Agatha and a few other women are still here, talking quietly. My feet are killing me and my back feels like it’s going to break as I throw my rag over my shoulder and nod to Ebb that she can go ahead; I’ll close up.

I give Penny as much time as I can as I tidy the pub, wipe down the taps, count up the register and begin stacking chairs. She and the other women are oblivious to me the whole time, all talking wildly, interrupted occasionally by loud cackles and hushed whispers.

“Er, sorry to break this up,” I say finally, when every closing job has been done. “But we’re closing.”

“Oh,” Penny says, looking away from the group and blinking at me through her horned rimmed glasses. She looks around the pub, confused, like she hadn’t noticed everyone leaving. “Oh, we lost track of time.”

“It’s okay, we can keep planning next week,” says a quiet, dark haired girl who I think is Keris. “I’ll bring that book I was talking about.” Keris stands up and reaches for her jacket, and the other stragglers do the same, winding scarves around their necks and buttoning up coats while they keep chattering at each other. Their faces are all red and shining and excited, like they’ve just run a distance, like eagerness is thrilling to spill out of theml

“This was _ such _ a good idea,” Trixie says, lingering by the door for Penny. “I’m so glad I thought of this.”

I glance between the two women, waiting for Penny to grab one of the many empties on the table and smash it over Trixie’s head, but Penny gives her a placid, patient smile and nods in agreement.

It sends chills down my spine.

“You go on, I’m going to help Simon,” Penny says, shooing the girls away as she reaches to grab some of the empties. Agatha lingers as well, picking up a few and holding them at a distance to herself.

“Pen, Ags, you don’t have to—”

“You stayed after closing for us,” Penny says, depositing the sticky glasses on my freshly cleaned bar. “It’s the least we can do. And we’ve already missed curfew anyway. What’s a few more minutes?”

“The sooner you clean up here, the sooner you can go to bed,” Agatha agrees, grabbing the cloth from my shoulder and wiping down the table. “You look dead on your feet.”

I _ am _ dead on my feet. I’ve been pulling double shifts all week and have been run to the bone. My revision is piling up, and every day feels like I’m fighting not to explode from the pressure of it all.

I could sleep for a week, but I don’t have that leisure. Maybe at winter break.

With Penny and Agatha helping, the pub is tidied up and ready for closing quickly enough, and my eyes are already dragging as I see them out into the chilly evening and turn the sign and lock the door. My feet stumble as I climb up the stairs, feeling like there are cement blocks tied to my shoes.

I don’t even change before I hit my bed.

🝪

Baz is opening his windows. 

The stuttering screech of the largest one, the one closest to me, echoes through my silent bedroom, and then the ghostly sound of Baz’s music follows shortly behind.

I’m still awake when I hear it, lying sideways on my bed, my shoes still on, still wearing a shirt that reeks of smoke and beer and sweat. My body is exhausted, but my brain won’t turn off.

Across from me, I can hear Baz clattering around.

I sit up on my elbows so that I can squint through the window to see him better. My flat is dark; he won’t be able to see in, so I feel comfortable watching. Lit up by the lights he’s left on, I can see him clearly as he gracefully climbs out of his window to perch on the sagging sloped roof of the coffee bar that’s below him. 

He’s wearing a black shirt, short at the sleeves and high at the neck. I’ve never seen him wearing anything but tidy button downs and sharp jumpers and well fitted jackets. He has a cigarette and teacup in one hand, a notebook in the other, and he sits down carefully, leaning his back against his window frame, balancing the teacup on his knee.

I climb out of my bed slowly, making my way across the room so that I can see him closer, trying to make no noise. I sleep with my windows open; I’m sure he can hear everything in my flat as clearly as I can hear all the sounds in his, and I don’t want him to know I’m up. 

Carefully, I sit on the floor near my window and lean my head back against the wall. I can’t see him like this, but I can hear him, can hear his music. When he’s out on the roof like this, he’s so close I could lean out my window and touch him.

What is his world like? I wonder this all the time. What does it feel like to be able to sit on your roof to casually smoke, free of pressures and stress and responsibilities? What is it like to not fall into bed each night, exhausted by the day but too anxious to sleep?

“I can hear you breathing.”

My head jerks up so fast I hit it on my window sill and curse, hastily trying to scoot away from the window, trying to pretend like I’m not here and he didn’t just catch me.

“Jesus, Snow, don’t hurt yourself.”

I stand up, glaring as I rub at the back of my head and scowl at him. I’ve never stood right at my window before while he’s been on the roof, so while I know that there’s almost no distance between us, it’s still surprising to see Baz sitting there, staring directly into my flat, so close he could cross the slim gap between us and climb through my window.

“Your music woke me up,” I lie. I rub at my head again. “Some of us have jobs, you know. We need a good night’s rest.”

“Maybe if you didn’t sleep with your window open, you’d have better luck,” he responds, tapping out his cigarette into his saucer.

“I’m not closing my window just because you bang about at all times in the night, coming and going and ruining other people’s sleep,” I growl back.

Baz just raises an eyebrow.

“You’re very stroppy tonight. What’s got you so bent out of shape, hm? Is it your beloved job? Or did Wellbelove snub you again?”

“Why are you out here?” I ask instead, ignoring his questions. I’m frustrated and annoyed and so bone-achingly tired, I don’t have time for his games. “Why do you sit on the roof?”

He tilts his head.

“I like the stars.” His voice is soft. Almost wondering. “They remind me of good things.”

His eyes grow wide and he bites down on his lip, looking almost surprised by his words, and I wonder if this is the first time I’ve ever had Baz tell me something true. 

It’s uncomfortable, almost. Having him say something so plainly. It makes him seem more like a man, and less like a myth.

“Go back to sleep, Snow,” he says, picking up his book and busying himself with his cigarette. His tone is colder now, more dismissive. And a bit tired. “There’s nothing out here for boys like you at an hour like this.”

He’s right. I should go back to bed. I should take off my shoes and close my curtains and try to find some sleep, even while he sits out here with his too long hair and his Welsh storm eyes and smokes and drinks and stares at the stars and exists, being everything I’m not and hating everything I am.

“Are you in the Catacombs Society?” I blurt.

His eyebrow goes up again.

“You really believe it’s real, don’t you?” he asks. A hint of mocking. A hint of wonder.

“Maybe.”

“And you think I’m a member.”

“Aren’t you?”

Baz sighs and flicks his ashes off the roof.

“And let’s say I were. Why would I tell you anything?” There’s a pause, and then he smiles. Sharp. Feral. “A member could get in trouble with his brothers for sharing secrets.”

A sharp crack of lightning goes through me. I _ knew it _. I knew he was a member. Vindication and anger and burning curiosity swell in my stomach.

“How do you find a meeting?” I press, leaning my arms against the windowsill to lean out. “Where do you meet? When do you meet?”

Baz takes a slow sip of his tea and shrugs.

“I couldn’t possibly tell you,” he says, dropping his cigarette into the dregs of his tea cup and gathering up his book. He pauses, stares down at the book in his hand, and then turns to me, a coy smile on his face. “But perhaps Nicodemus could.”

He climbs back through his window easily, and when he turns back, he pauses for a moment.

“Good night, Snow.”

He slides the window shut with another creak, and then there’s nothing left before me but stars.

🝪

I have no idea who Nicodemus is.

Agatha suggested he may be another Watford student, though I can’t imagine anyone having a name like that. My theory was that he was an astrologer, and it took me ages to look him up before I realised I was thinking of Nostradamus.

Normally I would ask Penny about something like this, but I don’t want to have to explain why I’m asking. I don’t want to admit that it’s about the society, and I don’t want to explain the strange conversation with Baz; the roof, the tea, the stars.

And anyway, she’s been busier than usual. I keep seeing her walking quickly across campus with Trixie, heads bent, discussing something. She and Agatha are constantly passing notes and pamphlets back and forth in the library. Her eyes are always narrowed and staring off over my shoulder, lost in thought.

I don’t know what it is that has her so occupied, but I’m not one to judge. I have my own obsession I’m not sharing.

Nicodemus. Nicodemus. Nicodemus.

One day while alone in the library, I look up the name in one of the large Encyclopedias lining the far wall. The pages are worn and butter soft, and they fall open effortlessly when I ask them to, my gaze sliding across the pages, looking for Nicodemus.

He’s from the Bible. Of course. I should have known. Everything is from the Bible.

I race from the Encyclopedias to the religion section, pulling a King James from the shelf and flipping through until I hit John. Part of me twinges with guilt. I should have known this. Back at the boys home and the grammar school, religion was taught and enforced. Some boys could quote whole passages. I never could; I never had the memory for it.

Maybe I’d have solved this Nicodemus mystery earlier if I’d simply paid closer attention.

I scan through John, turning the pages of the Bible, reading through passages talking about eternal life and justice and the teachings of Christ, and then I slam the book closed and push it away from me.

There’s nothing there. Unless Baz is secretly devout, there’s nothing there.

It’s possible he’s just toying with me. I can’t ignore that possibility, that he’s made this up and sent me on a chase. But Baz isn’t random. He mentioned Nicodemus for a reason.

Even if it’s not related to the Society, it’s a hint about Baz. My first real hint in the mystery that is him.

🝪

It’s the kind of Saturday morning that reminds me of Wales, with the sky bright blue and cloudless, a slight autumn chill to the air, when the sun plays through my hair and everything feels brimming with possibilities.

I have a rare morning off, and I’m walking back from the shops after doing my errands for the week. There’s work and reading waiting for me later — two shifts at the pub this evening — but for now I have nothing to do but breathe clean air and enjoy the sun on my face.

I love the Watford sun. I love the way it makes my skin look gold, makes the freckles all over my body look less like dust and more like cinnamon. In the blue skies and bright sun of a Watford morning, I feel powerful, motivated. Like I’m finally myself.

My feet take me down High Street, passing by the Watford Chapel and the rectory, winding down uneven cobbled streets past golden sandstone buildings and tidy terrace houses with neat gardens. I’m heading toward the Moat. I don’t know the actual name of the river that winds around Watford and its village like a protective hug. Everyone just calls it the Moat.

The shouting reaches me as I pass over the Watford Bridge, and I pause to look down at the scene before me. Three boys in a punt are meandering lazily down the Moat; the punter at the end pushing them along is in tails and a top hat, while another, his dark hair quaffed up into some kind of ridiculous updo, leans over the edge of the little craft, running his hands through the water.

At the head of the punt is Baz. He’s sprawled out, in tails and a top hat as well, a bottle of wine in his hand, the other conducting lazily in the air as he shouts directions to the punter. Dev. Empty bottles of champagne lay around his feet.

They shout and laugh as they float down the river, lost in their world of wine and laughter and decadence, and something thick and mean curls up in my stomach as I watch the Saturday sun stroke the sharp edges of Baz’s tan skin. His lips, which have fallen open in a careless pout, look stained from the wine, even from here.

“Push harder!” he calls to his cousin, bringing his wine up to his mouth. “We’re nearly out of wine and I cannot be allowed to sober up!”

He takes a long sip, and as he lowers the bottle, he sees me, standing on the bridge watching him.

“Enjoying the show, Snow?” he calls from the water. 

“You look like idiots,” I respond. Baz’s laughter echoes back to me, sharp and high and uncharacteristically delighted, cracking across the sunny morning like thunder.

“Don’t be so quick to judge, Snow,” he says, shaking his head. “The Society will make you do far stranger things than this.”

“You’re doing this for the Society?” I ask, feeling shot through with a bolt of energy. Is this some kind of initiation? Or a celebration? Or some strange rite of passage? I still haven’t solved the Nicodemus puzzle, and I’m electrified by the idea of having another clue.

But Baz just laughs and takes another sip of wine, and Dev pushes them further down the Moat.

“Wait, is this for the Society?” I call again, desperate as I watch them float further and further away. “Baz? Who is Nicodemus? Where can I find him?”

“Why don’t you ask your kin?” he shouts back.

I reel back, feeling struck. My kin? I don’t have kin. I don’t have a family.

He knows that. I don’t have anyone to ask.

Cruel, angry resentment curls up in my stomach. He’s toying with me. He’s just stringing me along, and I’ve been going along with it. He’s been making a fool of me.

I push off from the bridge as he and his friends go around the corner. My shoulders hunched, my heartbeat pounding with anger and humiliation, I go home.

🝪

It’s a slow night at the Goat’s Head.

Penny and her organisation are the only large group here, and there are a few men lining the bar, chatting with each other, but otherwise we’ve been empty. I love it when this happens, because it gives me the chance to do some of my revising while I’m at work, and I don’t even have to feel guilty about it.

Ebb understands; she never gives me a hard time for spreading my books out at one end of the bar, and is patient if I get too focused on my work and take a bit to get to a customer. If it weren’t for Ebb’s understanding, I don’t think I’d ever finish all my work.

I can’t focus tonight, though. It’s absolutely burning in here, because Ebb started the fireplace, but the weather is still changing enough that the night isn’t cold enough to send a deep chill through the pub, and the smell of the crackling wood combined with the heat pouring off of it makes my head spin.

The book I’m trying to get through doesn’t help. Henry Vaghaun’s selected poetry. I was meant to read it earlier in the term, but my tutor wanted me to read George Herbert first, so i could trace Vaughan’s influences. It’s dense seventeenth century metaphysical poetry, full of religious imagery and twisting phrases.

I don’t like poetry. I don’t get it. The words feel soft but they twist me into knots, skating between lines and pulling double meanings. Reading poetry, for me, is like talking to Baz: falling through a mystery, where everything is beautiful but nothing says what it means.

But Vaughan is Welsh, and Herbert was Welsh, and something tiny and proud and determined keeps pulling me back to their texts, keeps prioritising them, keeps telling me to give them their due respect.

I don’t have a patriotic fervour, but I do have pride. I’m not the first to come from the deep valleys and rolling hills, to carve my place in a strange flat land. I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last, and these men are like me. It’s a small, tiny feeling of commonality, one I don’t often find at Watford.

Tonight I’m slogging through _ The Night_. Another in a long line of religious poems, full of odes to the moon.

_ Through that pure virgin shrine, _

_ That sacred veil drawn o’er Thy glorious noon, _

Penny’s snorting laugh drags me out of the text after the first few lines, and I blink up at her. She’s surrounded by a large group of women, all laughing, all bent over notebooks and pamphlets, books stacked on the table between pints and cups of tea. Her numbers have swelled just over the course of several weeks. I can’t even keep up with what they’re doing anymore — several of the members seem to have brought bags of bedsheets with them, and I can only imagine what those are for. Sashes, probably. Or maybe that large, hand-written banner Penny is always threatening to hang over the library.

Agatha catches my eye and smiles, and I smile back before forcing my attention back to my book. My head feels foggy and sluggish, slowed by the heat of the room, and I rub my knuckles over my eyes before settling back in.

_ That men might look and live, as glowworms shine, _

_ And face the moon, _

_ Wise Nicodemus saw such light _

_ As made him know his God by night. _

A bolt goes through me, and I sit straight up on my stool. Nicodemus. Nicodemus. He’s staring at the full moon.

My mind races back to that night on the roof, Baz tapping his book. _ “When do you meet?” _ I’d asked. _ “I couldn’t possibly tell you,” _ he’d said. _ “But perhaps Nicodemus could.” _ And again I see Baz, lounged in the punt, top hat and tails, champagne in his hand. _ “Where can I find him?” _ I’d shouted. _ “Why don’t you ask your kin?” _

My kin. The Welsh poets.

I feel lit up inside by thunder, like my organs are being buffeted by high winds, like my hands are shaking. He wasn’t playing me. He was giving me actual clues. Real clues.

The heat of the room and the pitch of my excitement is making me feel dizzy. Slamming the book closed, I grab my jacket from it’s hook by the bar.

“Ebb, I’m taking my break,” I call. She’s seated at the table with Penny and Agatha and the rest of the women, and she waves her large hand, distracted. Pulling my jacket on, I slip out of the door and into the chill of the night.

The cold air feels good on my overheated face and fills my lungs as I breathe deep, trying to calm the excitement in my stomach. It’s times like this that I wish I smoked, that I could come out here and loitre in front of the pub and coffee bar next door with the rest of the smokers and have something communal to share, something to do with my hands, something to calm myself.

I walk toward the end of the street aimlessly, no direction, my hands fisted in my pockets, thinking over my discovery.

The Catacombs Society is real. And Baz is a member. And he was helping me find it.

And Agatha was right. They meet on the full moon.

I squint up at the sky, but it’s useless. The moon is obscured by cloud cover, and even if it weren’t, I wouldn’t be able to tell its stages. I’m reading for English, not science. I know it wanes and waxes and shines through, but that’s all. The moon is unknowable and untouchable to me.

I get to the end of the pavement and turn around. I can go to the library and get a copy of the farmer’s almanac. I can watch Baz’s flat for movement the night of the full moon, and I can follow him. I could find the Society.

And then I’ll decide what to do with it.

Part of me wants to tell Penny, to prove that I _ did _ figure something out on my own for once, but I know she wouldn’t approve. I should tell Agatha, though. She was the one whose idea this was to begin with. She wouldn’t judge me.

But a larger part of me doesn’t want to. Something in me has curled around this realisation, something petty and jealous and secretive, something whispering that it may have started with Agatha and me, but it will end with me and Baz.

🝪

Autumn is on its last leg.

The skies are perpetually grey now, the wind persistent, the afternoons marked with rain. It seems absurd that a week ago it was too warm in the Goat’s Head for the fireplace, and now it’s all I can think of as I hurry back from class, the cold air biting at my nose as I bike down the highstreet, hurrying to work.

There’s a large shipment of boxes stacked out front of the Goat’s Head from this morning’s delivery, and I slow my pace, allowing the uneven cobbles of the pavement to rattle my bicycle to a stop. It’s been a battle to get Ebb to leave the deliveries for me to carry in, and I smile to see it. I’ve finally won a round.

I come to a stop just out front of the coffee bar next door and dismount, leaning one hand on the window to catch my balance, and glance inside as I do. I’ve never been in. It’s a strange outlier on this street, the shop front modern, the sign printed, not handpainted.

I know students go there; loads of students, the ones with disposable income, the ones with nothing to do in the afternoons and weekends but drink bitter espresso and sit around with friends. There’s never been a point for me to go in: I don’t drink coffee, and I couldn’t afford the bar even if I did.

This afternoon it’s full: far busier than the Goat’s Head ever is this time of day, the sound of music and laughter spilling out. There’s a number of students sat at tables in front of the window, several of the men with hair a touch too long, the women with hair too short, cigarettes dangling out of their mouths as words and laughter fall out. Tiny coffee cups stained with espresso foam and caked coffee grounds litter their table.

One of them is Niall, I realise.

I’ve never seen him without Baz, almost didn’t recognise him out of his shadow, but there he is, pressed close against another man whose face I can’t see through the window, heads tilted together, a smile on his face.

They’re very close. None of the people around them seem bothered, however. No one is staring at them curiously.

They break apart only when a waiter comes over to pick up their coffee cups and put down fresh ones. He’s in a black shirt like the one I saw Baz in the other evening, his hair too long, even from the back. He turns to say something to the table next to him, and I can see his profile.

Slanted nose, a hard set jaw, something soft at the corner of his mouth. Too long hair falling around grey eyes.

The wind blows against my back, pushing at the neck of my jacket, whipping my hair around my face, causing the leaves to skitter around my feet and blow into the window, and the waiter turns all the way.

I duck instinctively, dodging out of the line of sight just before he turns fully. My stomach feels like it’s in my throat as I wait for several agonising moments before standing back up.

Baz’s back is to me again as he cleans off a table, his arm working a rag over the formica countertop. I watch him, my eyes narrowing, until I realise that Niall is staring at me, his mouth pulled in a mean line.

I duck my head and keep walking, embarrassment slapping my cheeks even redder. Thoughts of retreating inside the Goat’s Head to warm myself at the fire are gone. All I want now is to rush inside the coffee bar, chase down Baz and ask him what this is. Why is he cleaning tables? Is this a joke? Another stunt, like the formal wear punting?

Or something specifically crafted to mock me?

🝪

“You _ knew _?”

My voice is too high, too loud for the quiet study room we’ve folded ourselves into. I hate this room; the wooden chairs are severe and blocky, the table rigid and utilitarian. The walls are padded with some kind of muted green fibre. It’s the new library wing, the one made of straight lines and glass blocks, the one that matches the strange designs of Cloisters College.

It’s all odd, to me. Uncomfortable and brutal in its modernity. It doesn’t fit the rest of Watford, with its rich mahogany and coarse stone walls and creeping ivy and cobbled streets. Watford feels different from Wales in the way that I’ve stepped into a fairytale. But this room and these new buildings feel like I’ve stepped into a spaceship.

“I thought everyone knew,” Penny says, shrugging. She sticks her pencil into her mouth and chews on the eraser. She makes it look like a delicate nibble. “He’s worked there since last year.”

“No he doesn’t,” I say, shaking my head. “There’s no way. Why would he have a job?”

“Why do you have a job?” Agatha asks. She doesn’t mean anything negative by it, but I take it like a slight, an embarrassed flush filling my cheeks.

“Baz is rich,” I argue. “His family is posh as all, there’s no way he needs money.” I shake my head. “And I would have known if he had a job. I walk by the coffee bar every day!”

“It is a bit unobservant of you,” Penny says, sounding bored. “But why would you know? It’s not like you go in there.”

“Have either of you?” I ask. It sounds accusatory, even to me. Penny and Agatha exchange a look.

“Well, it’s not exactly our type of scene, is it?” Agatha says carefully. “Everyone who goes there is very…”

“Posh?” I ask.

“No,” Penny says. “They’re a bit, well…”

“My father calls them beatniks,” Agatha says. “Like the Americans.”

“Are they really, though?” Penny asks, tilting her head. “They all take baths regularly, from what I can tell. There’s a word for this, I just can’t remember it.”

“But I thought beatniks were very… anti things?” I add, thoroughly confused. “Baz is very pro-being a posh shithead.”

“So rich boys playing at being artists,” Penny says, shrugging. “Very Byronic.” She rolls her eyes. “Very Baz.”

Agatha smiles. “Very Baz.”

“Oh!” Penny’s eyes light up. “Mod. That’s the word. _ Modernist _. The jazz and rhythm music and all that.”

“I kind of like it,” Agatha says. “The fashion is lovely.”

“But _ why_?” I demand, unsatisfied. I don’t care about the words or the culture or the fashions. It’s too much for me to take in, anyway. Where I came from there was poor and not poor, and nothing in between. “Why would he work there? None of it makes sense. He’s playing at something. Whether it’s this or the Society—”

“What about the Society?” Agatha asks. Penny narrows her eyes.

“We aren’t seriously still on this, are we?”

“Er.” This is my opportunity to tell them. About Nicodemus, the Welsh poets, the moonlit meeting. “No. I just meant, you know, he was all mysterious about it the other day.”

“He just does that to rile you up,” Penny insists. “You shouldn’t let him get to you. He’s just trying to get under your skin.”

“He’s not under my skin,” I insist, frowning. Agatha and Penny exchange looks. “He’s not!”

“Then there’s no reason to worry about it, hm?” Penny says, grinning at me. “Come on, enough about Baz, what do you think of my newest pamphlet?”

🝪

I hear his radio before I see him, seated out on the roof, the smoke and steam from his tea cup mixing in the thin moonlight. It’s not a full moon. A crescent. Half on its way there.

I turn on my radio and twiddle the dials, searching for the station, and then make my own tea and toast. Ebb fed me during work, but I like toast before bed. Like the little ritual of warm grain, butter and jam. It’s the freedom to make it myself, I think. That’s the ritual I like more than eating it. The choice, the ability. To use as much butter as I want.

He’s still on the roof when I’ve finished and washed up and begun gathering my clothes to take to the laundry tomorrow. I can smell his smoke, mixing with the smells of my flat, carried in with the scent of late November.

It’s too cold to have the windows open, but I do it anyway. I keep them open almost year round, if Baz has his music going.

He’s bundled in sweaters, no jacket, and a hat. He looks ridiculous. The kind of ridiculous I’ve always associated with his wealth, the kind of absurdity that comes naturally to those who don’t have to worry about anything. A kind of measured indifference to the realities of life.

“Niall says you’ve been stalking the coffee bar.”

His voice floats in through my window. Sharp. Severe. I look up from where I’ve been folding my socks; I hadn’t even been staring at him. Just standing there, listening to his music.

“Why do you work there?” I ask, dropping my socks and moving to the window. I lean my arms on the sash and stare out at him. He’s a dark smudge, backlit by the lights of his flat.

“Who says I work there?”

He’s so close. When he’s on the roof and I’m at my window, he’s so close, just a few metres away.

“I saw you cleaning tables.”

He takes a drag of his cigarette, holds it away, takes a sip of his tea. Doesn’t look at me. If I climbed out my window, I could sit on the thin strip of roofing and reach across the divide. I could touch his hair, we’re so close.

“I’m writing a book,” he says, flicking his ashes. “About slumming it. Being a working man. I thought about interviewing you for it, but I wasn’t sure you could string together a sentence well enough to help me understand the experience.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“See?” he says, smiling. “That’s the working man experience I’m looking for.”

“You’re not working in a cafe for a book,” I argue, shaking my head. “You’re not writing a book.”

“Don’t presume to know me, Snow.” His voice is flat and bored, but carries a warning. “You know nothing about me.”

“I know that nothing you say is true,” I argue, sliding my window open higher so I can clamber unsteadily onto the roof. Baz blinks at me in surprise, but he doesn’t move, and I crouch awkwardly, my hands flat on the roof.

“Why do you live here?”

He looks away from me, out toward High Street. I can see the street from my other window, the one that doesn’t face him, but out here, at night, the dew-slick cobblestones look like small pools of moonlight, the dotted lights in the flats across the street flickering in the dark like candles.

“I like it,” he says. Takes another drag of his cigarette and lets it go. “Why do you live here?”

“I have to,” I say, honestly. “I can’t afford campus lodging.” I pause. “Unlike you.”

His mouth twists into something sly and mean, and he lets out a small snort.

“It took you ages to riddle out my secret,” he says finally. Still not looking at me.

“About Nicodemus?”

An eyebrow goes up.

“About the coffee bar. You really are slow, aren’t you?” He puts his cigarette out in his tea cup and I wince at the small, cut off sizzle. “I thought that was just something people said, but it’s true, isn’t it?”

“People say I’m slow?” Blood pounds in my ears. I thought Baz was the only one who spoke badly of me. My face floods with heat. Have other people noticed? How I run between class and work, never on time to either? How I fall behind in group lectures, how I’m never caught up on my reading, how I dress differently and speak differently and think differently, how I’m not meant to be here, not really, not—

“No,” Baz says, cutting through my thoughts. His voice is low. Curious. “No, no one says that. No one says anything but kind things about you.” A sudden, derisive snort and his tone changes. “People admire you.”

“Why?” The sound that gets pulled from me is ugly in its disbelief. “No they don’t.”

“Of course they do, Snow. Look at you.”

“What’s that meant to mean?”

“You’re golden,” he sneers. “You’re honest and determined. You’re wholesome, country bred. You have something that no one else here has.”

“What’s that?”

“Pride,” he says simply. He meets my gaze, finally, and I wish he hadn’t. I wish he hadn’t fixed me with this look, hadn’t pinned me to my spot. “You’ve made your own way, pulled yourself up. You fight your own battles. You do what they all wish they could, but are far too scared to. You persevere.”

The words he’s saying are kinder than anyone has ever said to me, but his tone is acidic, hateful, spiteful. I parse through them, trying to find what he really means. He never says what he means. His words are never meant to be taken at face value.

“But you…” I start. “You work.”

“I work,” Baz says, slowly rising to his feet, “so I can pretend I don’t have to.” He turns to go, and then gives me one last look over his shoulder. A sneer curls up his lips; in the moonlight his skin looks washed pale. Too pale, his olive skin erased. He looks like a ghost.

“You should come in for a coffee some time, stop staring at the window.” He climbs over his window sill and sets foot gracefully inside his flat. “See if it’s your crowd.”

“Wait,” I call, before he can close the window. “The Society. Where do you meet?”

He tilts his head. Smiles. Feral and sharp in the moonlight, made of trouble.

“Why, the Catacombs, of course.”

And then he slides the window shut between us, for once leaving him inside his warm, light-flooded flat, and me outside, sitting in the cold and staring up at the stars.

🝪

“Simon, I’ve told you, there are no catacombs on the campus.”

I kick absent-mindedly at a pile of leaves, stepping into the road to do so, and try not to growl at Penny.

“What about at the chapel? Are there any graveyards around?”

“There is a graveyard,” Agatha says. She’s on my other side, sandwiched between Penny and me as we walk back from the tea room. We go, sometimes, on Saturdays. Agatha always insists, even when I try to make an excuse, and says it’s her treat, that she wants to, that she misses having tea like back home, and we’d be doing her the favour for coming with her.

It’s one of my favourite things about Agatha, the way she can be gracious even when manipulating you into something.

“Are there catacombs in the graveyard?” I press.

Agatha shakes her head.

“No. It’s just a small graveyard. Nothing like that around here.”

I sigh, my breath misting and swirling before me, visible in the November air. It was too much to hope, I suppose.

We round the corner of High Street, coming up quickly on the Goat’s Head. Penny and Agatha have a meeting with several women from their organisation, and Penny’s bag is bursting with books and papers. Both of them are walking quickly, coats held closed against the wind, eager to get to warmth.

I slow as we pass the coffee bar, just like I do every time I walk by it, my eyes lingering on the window, doing a sweep of the inside, looking for dark hair.

He’s not there. Or at least, not visible. The shop looks mostly empty today, aside from a few tables. Niall is there again — tucked into the corner this time, talking with a man whose back is to me. I think it’s the same one from before; same curly dark hair, same broader-set shoulders. He’s wearing a cap that’s obscuring his face. They’re not as close as they were last time.

“Simon, come _ on _,” Penny says, huffing. “Stop gazing in windows and staring at Baz.”

“I’m not staring at Baz,” I mutter, shoving my hands into my jacket and hurrying along. “Niall was in there, though. Niall Kelly? I saw him in there last time with the same bloke.” I pause, holding open the door to the Goat’s Head. “They were sitting really close.”

As they pass by me, Agatha and Penny exchange a look.

“What?” I ask, letting the door bang closed behind us. The Goat’s Head is empty, and there’s still time before my shift, so I trail my friends to the table near the fire. “What was that look about?”

“Well, there are rumours,” Penny says, her voice low. She takes off her hat and jacket and drops into a chair, while Agatha stands to slowly unbutton the black felt buttons on her herringbone coat.

“What rumours?”

“No,” Penny says, shaking her head. She starts pulling books out of her bag. “No, it’s such a serious thing to say.” She pauses, her eyes darting around, looking at me quickly and then away. “Not that there’s something wrong with it, I believe that people should—” she pauses again, bites her lip. “Well, I wouldn’t want to spread rumours...”

“Don’t,” Agatha says, sitting down carefully. I grab the seat next to her eagerly, leaning toward Penny. “It’s his business.”

“I know,” Penny agrees. “I hate how people gossip.” She stacks several books of poetry and Greek myth onto the table. “And about Baz, too.”

“What about Baz?” I say it too loud.

“Baz?” Agatha says, startled. “I’ve never heard it about Baz.”

Penny makes a scrunched up face that pushes her pointy glasses up, looking the picture of guilt.

“Oh, I shouldn’t…” she sighs, looks pained. “My parents talk about it sometimes.” It comes out in a gush, like a confession. “Some of the faculty talk about it, sometimes. Because they all knew his mum, you know? My father always tries to stop them, though.”

“What?” I ask, my head spinning. “What are you talking about?”

They’re saying words that I know but can’t understand, can’t possibly begin to follow. What about his mum? What does this have to do with Niall?

“Sometimes I wish he would just date someone,” Penny mutters. “Just a few casual dates, that’s all it would take.”

“I’d do it,” Agatha says, flicking her hair behind her ear. I stare at her, horrified. Our break up was mutual and full of goodwill, but i don’t exactly want to listen to her talk about dating _ Baz _.

Jealousy floods my system, washing out the confusion. She can’t date Baz. They wouldn’t suit. He’s dark and brooding and mysterious and she’s solid and golden and wholesome. They’re not — they couldn’t — he can’t—

“Don’t date someone out of pity,” Penny says, sighing.

“I don’t pity him,” Agatha responds, sounding offended. “It would be helping him.”

“What are you talking about?” I say again, my confusion and jealousy twisted into anger. Penny and Agatha look at each other again, both looking very guilty.

“We shouldn’t be talking about it,” Agatha says, her voice stern. She reaches for one of Penny’s books. Penny nods.

“It’s true. The wrong rumour could ruin his life.” She looks at me, her eyes softening, her gaze questioning, concerned, too worried. Her voice goes very quiet. “It’s still illegal, after all.”

“Please tell me,” I say, even though my voice has lost some of its insistence. Even though I’m starting, deep in my gut, to have an idea of what they’re talking about. Something I don’t want to name, something I haven’t ever spoken about, something that I’ve only heard talked about in harsh tones and whispers. Something that I see stamped in the newspapers in thick black fonts.

Something that lives behind shut doors in my mind, lurks deep in my belly at the worst moments. Something I shut away, laying awake at night in the boys dormitory of the grammar school, something I pushed back on the football pitch at breaks. Something that I don’t think about.

Something that belongs to a very different world.

🝪

The coffee bar is as deserted as I’ve ever seen it.

Only a few students seated at tables around the edges of the room, the bar at the far corner deserted. A small bell chimes as I walk inside, echoing off my insides, filling my chest with anxiety. I breathe deep, cross the black and white penny tile floor and head toward one of the smooth formica tables near the window. The one I’d seen Niall and the faceless man at, the one Baz had stood at.

Baz appears seconds after I’ve sat down.

“You’re stalking me.”

He’s in a black shirt again today, one with the mock neck, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He’s left off his jacket, and he’s wearing boots. Not work boots. Sleek, leather things with a pointed toe and sturdy heel.

“You invited me in,” I say, trying to sound casual. I don’t know what I’m doing here, but I don’t want him to know that.

“What do you want, Snow?”

I look over his shoulder, to the large sign advertising coffees, all with names I don’t understand, their prices far more than I’ve ever spent on a cuppa in my life.

“A coffee.”

Baz’s lips pull into a small sneer.

“You won’t like it.”

I look down at the table top and scratch my fingernail across it.

“Try me.”

When I look back up, one eyebrow is quirked. He turns away from me without another word.

The jukebox in the corner is playing something heavy and rhythmic that I don’t recognise, and the wind outside has begun to send drizzles into the window, the gentle pattering growing louder every time a gust forces the rain into the glass. I open the book I brought, one of my school books. Blake.

I’m only a few words in when a tiny white porcelain cup is placed in front of my nose. I look up from the warm, frothy coffee to see Baz folding himself into the seat across from me, crossing his legs as he takes out a cigarette and lights it up.

The smell of the coffee floats up; warm, rich, spicy almost, and deeper than the smell of tea. Baz is watching me, his eyes flicking from my book to my coffee, one eyebrow ready to raise, like he’s expecting me to cop out.

I raise the cup to my lips and take a sip.

It’s disgusting.

The espresso is bitter and sharp and tastes like burnt dirt on the back of my tongue, and it takes everything in me not to cough. It’s revolting. Even the bitterest of tea has never tasted like that. Why do people _ drink _it?

“It’s an acquired taste,” Baz says, blowing his smoke away from me as he turns to stare out the rainy window. “You’re just now reading Blake? I thought you were meant to get to that earlier in the term.”

I clear my throat and take another hesitant sip of the coffee. It’s still disgusting.

“My tutor is letting me move things around,” I say. The espresso sits like sour fruit on my tongue. 

“You don’t get poetry, do you?” he asks.

“No.” A frustrated sigh escapes me as I say it. “I hate it.”

“Mhm,” Baz says, reaching forward with one long finger to slide the book toward himself. “I love it.”

“How?” I take another sip of the espresso. It settles better this time, tastes less bitter. “_ Why _?”

“I don’t suppose I had a choice in it,” he says with a one-shouldered shrug. “I just do. Likely because of my mother.” He leans forward and taps his ashes into the ashtray on the table. “She was a poetry professor.”

“A professor?” I think about what Penny said. The professors talking about Baz because of his mum.

“Indeed,” he drawls. A small, secret smile starts at the corner of his mouth. “She was the first woman to become a professor at Watford. She taught poetry.” He taps his ashes again and turns back to the window. The soft smile is gone. His features have hardened. “She loved poetry. She would read it to me.”

I don’t know which to pay more attention to: the use of past tense, or the startling reality that Baz is telling me the absolute truth. Not cutting around his words and layering different meanings. It’s the most genuine conversation we’ve ever had.

“The coffee is good,” I say, instead of any of the whirlwind of thoughts and questions in my mind. “I like it.”

“No you don’t.” He puts out his cigarette and gets up from the table. I lean forward, to pull several coins out of my pocket, but Baz taps my book and shakes his head.

“On the house.” His eyes trail over my face, searching for something. “For the pleasure of seeing you try something different.”

Then he reaches out and adjusts my collar. Long, thin fingers tucking my shirt back under my jumper, lingering for one moment on the fabric over my collarbone.

I look up from his hand to his eyes, and he snatches his hand back, grabs my coffee mug and strides to the back.

I leave the coffee bar right after that, standing outside in the grey December drizzle for a moment as I try to determine what’s causing the jittery, skittering feeling in my chest.

🝪

“_Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?_”

My head bangs into the counter above my stove as I jerk upright to look out my window. I didn’t hear Baz open his window or climb out on the roof, but there he is; stretched out on that tartan wool blanket, laying on his back, one hand tucked under his head, the other holding his book as he reads by the dying light of the sun.

“_In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes?_”

“What are you doing?” I call, poking my head out of the window. It’s freezing out. I pull my jumper closer.

“Reading poetry,” Baz drawls. “Clearly you’re unfamiliar.” He clears his throat and returns to his book. “_On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?_” He glances at me. “I rather suppose this is all leading towards a larger question, don’t you, Snow?”

“What are you—”

“Shush, I’m reading.” His voice is mocking, but not sharp. “_And what shoulder, & what art/ Could twist the sinews of thy heart?_”

I duck back inside my window and turn back to my hob, where I’ve been boiling water for tea. Without thinking too deeply about it, I pull down a second cup. Baz continues like I haven’t left.

“_And when thy heart began to beat/ What dread hand? & what dread feet?_”

I pour the tea, watching the steam rise up above the small strainer of leaves, one cup after another. Then I measure out a small amount of milk and a large amount of sugar into one, and try not to question why I have this knowledge so readily tucked away.

He’s still reading, rounding in on the final stanza by the time I climb through my window, tea in both hands, and balance myself on the roof across from him.

“_Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night_,” he calls again, his voice swelling like he’s in a stage production, his crisp, clear accent ringing out around us. “_What immortal hand or eye/ Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?_”

He lets the book rest on his chest, rising and falling slightly with the timing of his breath, and I carefully reach across the divide between us and set his cup of tea down next to him.

His eyes flick to it, lingering on the steam rising, and then immediately train themselves back on the dusky sky.

“It’s a poem about a question,” he says. “About how and why and what kind of creator would make something so perfect and depraved as the tiger, alongside something so lovely and wholesome as a lamb.”

He turns to his side slowly, one arm still supporting his head, and takes a long sip of the tea I’ve made him.

“What do you think about the lush language used to describe something so dark?” he murmurs. “Do you think it’s appropriate to treat something perverse with such respect?” The silence hangs between us. “You view things as very black and white. Right and wrong. How does the tiger fit into that, Snow?”

My voice feels stuck. I want to tell him that I don’t. That at one point I may have, but it was only because I had to. Because everything in my world was do or do not. Poor or not poor. Full or hungry, warm or cold. My world before Watford dealt in absolutes. No room for the things inbetween. No possibility for other options.

“What do you think?” Baz presses. “Did he smile, his work to see?” Another pause. “Would you have smiled, looking at something so horrible?”

I put my tea to the side and lay down. I can’t keep looking at him, can’t keep watching his eyes.

“The tiger isn’t horrible,” I say. The sky is growing properly dark now, the moon rising. It will be full, soon. “It’s just his nature. He can’t help it.”

Baz snorts.

“Born to be beautiful and damned, then?”

“No,” I say, swallowing. “Just beautiful, I think. Not damned.” Another pause. “He can’t be damned for being who he is. Who God made him to be.”

Baz doesn’t respond to that. Silence grows between us.

“Is the Society real?” I ask, my voice bursting into the night. “Are you actually a member?”

“Are you really still working on that mystery?” Baz’s voice is clipped, amused. Tired, a little.

I don’t know how to answer him. I should say yes, I am. But the truth is that I’m not. I haven’t been for some time. The only mystery I’m working on anymore is him.

But I don’t say that. Because I’ve been given clues, small hints, trails to follow on this maze of finding Baz, of pinning him in place, of pulling back his layers. You can’t tell the mystery you’re close to solving it. 

“Yes,” I say. “I am.”

“Well,” he responds. There’s a shuffling and I turn my head to see him sit up, take a last sip of the tea, and stand. “I couldn’t possibly help you there.” He reaches across the divide of our roofs and carefully places his empty cup near my feet. “Go do your reading, Snow. You’ll catch your death out here.”

🝪

Tonight is the full moon.

It’s already rising, just visible on the edge of the horizon, peeking through before the sun even goes down. I’ve been watching it from where I’m laying on the lawn next to Penny, Agatha and their friends.

I’m surrounded by women, actually. It’s like every female student at Watford is gathered here, all of them laughing and talking and whispering.

The lawn is packed. It’s the Friday before our reading week, and everyone is out here despite the chill, stretched out in front of the White Chapel with blankets and hats and thermoses of tea and liquor. Laughter and cigarette smoke spill up from every direction.

My plan has been to stay up tonight, to see if Baz leaves his flat, and follow him. See if he’ll lead me to the Society. See if I can find their meeting and become a member. It’s what I’ve been thinking of all term, it’s what’s been pushing me forward, what’s been getting me through the days.

I never fully decided what I’ll do when I find them. If I’ll join, get the grades, get the free pass. If I’ll turn them in — make Penny proud, even the playing field. Do what’s right.

The latter, I think. That’s what I think will happen. I’ll hand over the proof to Penny and let the Society topple, bring proof to the Dean. Make those men work as hard as I do.

_ But Baz does work already. _ The voice in the back of my mind keeps whispering that to me. He works just as hard as I do, even though it seems effortless for him. Well, he has a job, at least. I dunno if he does his schoolwork. Penny says he does. And he’s brilliant, so I’d believe it.

My body is buzzing with indecision, with the need to _ do _ something, so wrapped up in thoughts that float like fog and cigarette smoke through my mind that I barely notice when it gets dark and the group of women around me start to leave.

“I’ll see you later,” Keris says, getting to her knees and packing up her mustard-yellow thermos. “I need to find that book I mentioned earlier so I can study, and I think it’s probably in the catacombs. I didn’t want to walk all the way over there before dinner, but—”

“What?”

I sit straight up, my body shot through with adrenaline. “What did you say?”

Keris glances at Penny, dark eyes moving under her dark fringe.

“I need to find my book?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head, “the catacombs. What about them?”

“Oh.” She stands and tightens her scarf. “They’re underneath the library. It’s the archival storage? Some of the grad students call it the catacombs.”

“Did you know this?” I ask Penny, turning on her. She shrugs.

“That sounds kind of familiar, I guess.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. I suddenly feel strung out. Moments ago I was questioning whether I even wanted to pursue this, but now — now I have something tangible. Something that didn’t come from Baz.

“I forgot!” Penny says, sounding harassed.

“Oh, don’t fuss at her, Simon,” Agatha says, touching my shoulder. “Here, do you want a scone?”

“Ags! This is it! This is where the Society meets!” I shout. I feel a manic laughter and frustration bubbling in me. “Tonight at the library! Come with me.”

“Simon, that was a joke,” Agatha says softly, shaking her head. Her mouth is pulled into a lovely pout. “It’s not real.”

“But we both said—”

“Just let it go,” she says, handing me her thermos. There’s still a bit of tea left in it, but I refuse it. “Please, don’t go chasing it. It’s not right.”

In the dark it’s impossible to read the look on her face, but her tone is solid. Serious.

“Alright,” I lie. “I won’t.” I lean back down on the grass and adjust my position, blanketing my head on top of my arms as I turn to look toward the library.

Several metres away, Baz and Dev are lounging on a blanket, eating grapes and watching me. One of Baz’s eyebrows goes up, and he gives me a lazy wave, and I realise he’s heard everything I’ve said.

🝪

Baz leaves his flat at 12 pm. I follow him at 12:01.

He’s at the end of High Street when I carefully creep out the entrance of the Goat’s Head. I stick to close to the walls, trying to stay in the shadows, stay back enough that he won’t see me.

He takes his time; he ambles along the Moat, stops on the Watford Bridge, lights a cigarette and stares out at the water while he smokes. I hide in the shrubs in the field next to the bridge, trying to keep out of his view.

He smokes for what feels like an hour before putting out his cigarette and continuing to campus. I pray that he’s heading toward the library, and he doesn’t disappoint. His sharp boots make tiny clicking noises on the deserted cobblestones, and he winds me through Watford’s old courtyards and sectioned lawns until the library looms ahead of us, grey stone and buttresses mixed with brutal modernity.

Then he turns and looks right at me.

“What do you want from me?” he asks, his voice echoing in the dark. It bounces off the cobblestones, rings against the stone of the library.

Heart racing, I step out of the shadows.

“I want to know where you’re going. What you’re doing.”

Baz pulls another cigarette — another, he has an endless supply — and lights it.

“This is what I’m doing.”

“You know what I mean,” I snarl. “The Society. It meets here, at the library, doesn’t it? Take me there.”

“If you’re so confident, go yourself.” He snorts. “You’ve been following me. And now you’ve found me. It’s not my fault if you still haven’t found what you’re looking for.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t head toward a secret door that will lead him downstairs, doesn’t turn to deliver some secret knock on the double oak doors.

“You don’t know,” I say, horror dawning over me. Suspicion and anger, too. “You’re not a member.”

“I never said I was.”

“But the clues!” I shout, running my hands through my hair. “You gave me clues! The full moon, the Catacombs.”

“You took them as clues,” he says, shaking his head. “I never said they were.”

My face is pulled into an ugly snarl, and my hands reach out of their own accord and push him. Hard. Back into the wall of the library. His cigarette falls at my feet.

“It’s not real, is it?” My voice is too high, my lilting accent making me sound mad. “It’s not real.”

“Oh, no, it is,” Baz says, nodding. “Or at least it used to be. My father was a member.”

“But the clues were fake!” I spit. “You were having me on. Just playing with me. Making me look like an idiot.”

“No, I was using you,” Baz snaps back. He sounds bored, looks bored, even with my forearm across his neck. “I kept you interested in the mystery so that when you riddled it out, I could beat you to the prize.”

“What?” I step back, letting my arm fall. Baz brings one long hand up to his neck, the only indication that anything had happened at all. “You were looking for the Society too?”

“Obviously,” he sneers.

“But… why? Why do you need in? You’re you.” I stare at him, feeling like all the progress I made on the mystery of Baz has been fake; more paper clues he’s scattered to the wind. “Why do you live in that flat? Why do you work in a coffee bar? What are you playing at?”

Baz scoffs, and it’s mean and derisive and condescending.

“You’re not the only one at Watford supporting himself.” He shakes out the sleeves of his jacket. “You like to think the world has given me everything, Snow. But it hasn’t. It’s only taken things away. No one is helping me. No one is giving me scholarships and chances at a new life.” He sneers. “I do what I have to.”

“But your family is rich.” Even knowing he worked, this doesn’t add up. I didn’t believe his lie about doing it for a book, but somewhere, deep down, I still doubted it. Thought he did it for a laugh. Played at being poor for the aesthetic of it. Assumed it was something he could quit at any time.

“They are rich,” Baz concedes. He turns away, and in the moonlight I can see his profile, his jaw flexing. “But as long as I am who I am, I won’t see their money.” He faces me again, his eyes like twin fires. “It’s either live a lie and be comfortable, or be myself and prove I don’t need them.”

Nothing makes sense. The world has pitched me upside down, and I’m falling, falling, unable to find my footing, passing through memories and images. Baz on his roof. Baz laughing from his blanket on the lawn. Baz reading Blake.

_ “Born to be beautiful and damned?” _ he’d asked.

“But you’re you,” I repeat, absolutely stunned. “You’re perfect. How could anyone not approve of you?”

He laughs, and it’s not mean. The soft corner of his mouth twitches, his sad eyes, always drooping downward, seem crunched up.

It feels like something breaks. The storm between us, maybe, the one he’s constantly ushering in, battering me with high winds. His hand comes up through the dark, and I think it’s going to land on my cheek and my chest spasms at the thought, but instead it goes to his hair, skating through the silky black strands.

“Simon…”

There’s a _ bang _ from the other side of the library, the sound of a door closing, hurried footsteps, and muted laughter.

Our eyes meet, wide, disbelieving.

“They’re here,” I breathe. Baz nods. Takes a step back, away from me, and looks toward the side of the library, where the noise was. Then looks back.

“Well, Snow,” he says, his fond tone gone, all business again. But the soft spot at the corner of his mouth remains. “Shall we?”

🝪

We find the door easily enough, a small rough hewn oak door set into the side of the building, left unlocked. It opened up onto a cramped back stairway that wound down and down, further into the library than I’ve ever gone before. The stone stairs were solid, old, worn smooth from use, and the air grew colder and colder.

“Where are we?” I whisper to Baz. He’s leading the charge, shouldering in front of me to go first.

“I don’t know,” he whispers back. “The catacombs, I presume.”

The stairs lead us to a darkened hallway filled with sagging bookshelves and old filing cabinets. The lights are off, but down the hall we can see flickering shadows from beneath a door, warm orange light that moves like it’s been thrown by candles.

“This must be the place,” Baz mutters, moving to the door. I follow closely, nearly touching his shoulder, and I can feel us both take large breaths at the same time. My pulse is racing.

He meets my eye, and I give a firm nod, and he opens the door.

More than a dozen hooded figures turn to stare at us.

The room is full of them; people of varying heights wearing red, hooded cloaks. The room is full of candles; every spare surface is littered with them, the wax dripping onto desks and bookshelves. They’re standing in a circle around a figure in the middle, who is holding a literal sword.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Baz breathes, taking a step back. My hand goes to his instinctually, grabbing onto something solid as the cloaked figures keep staring. They’re silent; none of them speak.

The person with the sword walks towards us.

“We, uh,” I say, backing up, forcing Baz behind me, “we came for the Society meeting.”

The sword grows closer.

“You aren’t allowed here!” someone yells from the back. There’s a smattering of whispers, a few distinct laughs.

“We were just leaving,” Baz says, yanking on my hand. His voice is tense with anxiety. “Snow, come on—”

The figure with the sword reaches us, and I take a deep breath as their hands come up and pull back their hood.

“Simon, we _ told _you not to come looking.”

“Penny?” A manic laugh gets punched out of me. “What are you doing here? What is this? Are you a member?”

“Why do you have a sword?” Baz asks, reaching out from behind me to bat the point away with his finger. He drops my hand to do it.

Around the room, the other figures are pulling back their hoods. Keris is in the corner, next to Trixie. All women. Almost all the women I know. Philippa pulls her hood off next, then —

Agatha.

“It’s to cut the cork off the champagne,” she says, holding up a fat-bellied bottle. She has an annoyed smile on her face, and the hood has messed up her hair, mussing blonde strands into her eyes. “You ruined the ceremony of it.”

“It wasn’t going to work anyway,” Penny says, huffing. “Simon, I love you, but go away, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“What _ is _ here?” Baz asks. I can almost _ hear _ the raised eyebrow in his voice, even if I can’t see it.

“The Society,” Trixie says, tucking a neatly curled strand of hair behind her own.

“It was Agatha’s idea,” Penny says, pointing with the sword. A few girls duck. “After she heard that preposterous secret society rumour from Dev and Simon got so obsessed with it. It doesn’t exist,” she adds, glaring at us, “and if it did it would be classist, elitist, and sexist.”

Baz and I both shift awkwardly.

“But we figured, why let the boy’s club have all the fun?” Trixie says from the corner. She’s greeted by a chorus of laughter.

“So you made a society?” Baz asks, stepping forward cautiously to survey the room. “What do you _ do_?”

Now that my terror has abated a bit, I can take in more detail. The red cloaks aren’t very blood-red like I thought; they look a bit more like pink-dyed bed sheets. And there are books everywhere — the same books I’ve been seeing Penny cart around. And in the corner is a large basket of what looks like cheese and grapes. There are wine bottles on every surface.

“We meet,” Penny says with a shrug. “We talk. We drink wine and read poetry and talk about our thoughts in a space that _ does not have men_.”

“Right,” Baz says, stepping back a bit from the tone in Penny’s voice. “Of course.”

“So there’s _ not _ a Society?” I ask, frowning.

“_Simon_.”

“Snow, I think we’ve overstayed our welcome,” Baz says, putting a hand to my elbow. It’s light, but direct, and he pulls on it. “Clearly we’ve wasted our time.”

“Were you even going to tell me—”

“Snow.”

I relent, letting Baz pull me backwards, back toward the hallway that no longer feels so cold and shadowy, the women looking on.

“Thanks for stopping by,” Penny says, her mouth stretched into a wide grin. “Don’t come back.”

🝪

We make a silent, humiliated retreat back through campus, walking shoulder-to-shoulder, our hands in our pockets, our feet echoing off the stone. Baz stops just short of the Watford Bridge, sighs, and veers off the path, heading toward the grassy bank of the Moat.

I follow him. Of course.

The grass is dewy and wet and I know if we stay here long it will soak through my trousers, but Baz isn’t concerned. He shifts his coat and pulls out a bottle of wine.

“Have you had that the whole time?”

He raises an eyebrow and grasps the cork, working it with his elbow. His hair swings in front of his face with the motion.

“I stole it from the cult meeting,” he says, yanking the cork out with a _ pop _. He holds the bottle to his lips and takes a long sip, and then holds it out to me.

I take it. Of course.

“I can’t believe it wasn’t real,” I say, bringing the wine bottle to my lips. I don’t drink it, though. Not yet. “I feel like an idiot.”

“Yes, well, I’d rather we just forget about all of it,” Baz mutters, shifting to pull out his tin case of cigarettes. 

“I still don’t get why you wanted in,” I say, shaking my head. “You’re brilliant. Why did you need guaranteed grades?”

“To piss off my father.” He lets out a small snort of laughter and takes a drag. “See, my mother taught here. Watford.” I nod, but stay silent. Almost holding my breath. “There was never any question I’d come here, just like she did, just like my father did. But, well.” He smiles, that sharp feral thing. “When he and I cut ties, when I decided to pay my own fees, he made it clear that unless I did things his way — the old, family way — I’d never rise to distinction at Watford like he did. I think he was rather afraid I’d make a mockery of the family. And my mother’s memory.”

He takes a long drag of his cigarette and blows it into the air. I finally take a sip of the wine. I imagine I can taste his cigarettes on the lip of the bottle.

“That’s why he thinks I am the way I am,” he says, not looking at me. “The trauma of losing a parent so young. Thinks it _ damaged _ me. Made me a lost young man.” Another dry laugh.

“So why try to get into the Society? I don’t understand.”

“To prove I could be who I am, and still have distinction.” He lets out smoke. “To prove my father wrong.” 

“Oh,” I say. I stare down at my hands. I don’t understand that. I can’t begin to understand that. “I suppose I wanted the distinction as well. But mostly I just wanted a chance.”

“A chance?”

“Yeah,” I say, nodding. I fall back onto my elbows and stare up at the moon. “All I’ve wanted at Watford is to be normal. But I’m so busy studying and working, I've never gotten a chance. I feel like…” I struggle for words, my voice stuttering, “like I arrived in a different world, and haven’t had time to even learn the rules yet. How does this place work? There’s so much I don’t know. I’m such an outsider here.”

“No one knows what they’re doing,” Baz scoffs. “It’s not just you.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s different. You don’t understand.”

Silence.

“Then make me.” Baz lies back as well, still holding his cigarette, and stares up. I let myself fall to my back as well.

“I was no one, in Wales,” I say quietly. “Just an orphan kid in a small village, shoved in a boy’s home. Then my old headmaster — Mr. Mage — he opened a school. A new grammar school, elite, competitive, designed to use new tools and educational systems, and he picked me. He picked me out of all the boys at the home, gave me a scholarship, and brought me to the school.” I clear my throat. “And then when it was time for me to leave, I was going to stay in Wales. Try to see if I could become a teacher. But he pushed me to apply to Watford. Helped my applications, helped me find grants. He went here, you know.”

It’s easy to picture Mr. Mage striding down the Watford campus, with his old fashioned moustache, his trim green waistcoats, his mud splattered wellies. Always walking too fast to catch up to. He always had a kind word for me — but only one. He didn’t waste his praise. Didn’t give it lightly.

“He unlocked this whole world for me,” I continue, “and then… he left me to it. I thought he was preparing me to come to England, to Watford, to fit in and really make something of myself. But I didn’t. I’m still just no one. Working class, struggling, an outsider, trying to fit in.”

“You’re not no one,” Baz says. Whispers. “You’re rather exceptional.”

“Then why do you hate me?”

The question hangs between us, thick in the night air.

“I don’t hate you,” he says slowly. “You hate me.”

“No, I don’t.” I shake my head. “I tried to be friends with you. At that first High Tea. I tried to shake your hand. You’ve always been awful to me.”

Baz is silent. I can hear the crackling of the paper of his cigarette as he takes another drag, can hear him expel his breath, but he doesn’t speak. He stays silent so long that I’m about to ask the question again, to repeat it and force him to answer, but before I can gather the courage, he clears his throat.

“I didn’t know any other way. I don’t know how to be gentle with things that deserve care.” His voice is soft. Careful. “Being awful is a way to keep people’s attention. Distract them from what you don’t want them to see.”

“That makes no _ sense_,” I growl. My hands fly to my hair and I grip it. The curls have come free of their careful placement, and I must look wild. Feral. Like something out of Welsh hills. “Don’t you understand? All I ever wanted was to be like you. To be normal.”

“No one is normal, Snow,” he says, his tone derisive. “Everyone is fighting their own battle, terrified of anyone else finding out.” He rolls to his side and props one hand under his head, his elbow lifting him up out of the grass. When I turn my head, he’s very close.

“I just don’t want to let people down.” My voice sounds croaky.

“There’s a whole world outside of Wales or Watford,” he says. “It took me too long to realise it. I was ready to follow my father’s footsteps and do my duty and be miserable.” He pauses, his eyes sharp. “You don’t have to walk the path your grammar school headmaster set out for you. You don’t owe people your future.”

“I just wish I knew the rules,” I whisper. “Knew how to do this. What to do next.”

“Hang the rules,” he says. He takes another drag of his cigarette and then holds it out to me. I take it without question, and bring it to my mouth. He watches, something hungry in his eyes as I close my lips around it and breathe deep, letting the heat and fire and smoke fill my lungs.

“The world is changing,” he continues. “This isn’t Wales. Take a risk. Do what _ you _ want.”

“What I want?” I ask, blowing out the smoke. I hand the cigarette back to him, and he lays back down on his back as he accepts it, bringing it to his lips once more.

“What you want,” he repeats, watching as I mimic his former position, raising myself to my elbow. We’re close. So close, and I lean over him. Slowly. His eyes follow me. Eyes like Welsh clouds. A smile like trouble.

“_Don’t go back to Wales,_” Agatha had told me. Standing in the dark, inhaling a cigarette. “_Go somewhere just for you. Do something you want_.”

I want to break the rules, I think. I want to unravel a mystery.

Carefully, I reach out one hand, and cup Baz’s cheek. The soft spot at the corner of his mouth curls. His eyes close for a heartbeat, and then reopen. Meet my own.

“Come and find me, Snow,” he says. Whispers. Smoke and breath curling into the night air between us.

And then I step through the door to a different world, and I kiss him.

🝪

_art by @penpanoply_


End file.
